PREPARE WAR | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 11, 1905

PREPARE WAR.

ONE of the striking prophecies of the Bible concerning the last days is found in Joel 3:9–14, as follows:

“Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up; beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about; thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision; for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”

And this is God's declaration of what will be despite all the peace congresses of men. Red savages do not daub themselves with war paint, hold their war dance, prepare their weapons and provisions because they love peace, or expect peace. Neither do white savages. The fearful and constantly-increasing cost of war during the last few decades is a striking fulfilment of our Lord's word. Put beside the above prophecy the following from the New York World of December 23:

If Congress should pass the resolution of Mr. Bartholdt, of Missouri, for the compilation of statistics showing the cost of war and war preparations in all countries since 1800, it will be found that the price should “stagger humanity.”

Charles Sumner said in 1845 that it would be “difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at an exact estimate of the cost” of standing army, navy, fortifications and arsenals and militia. To these, he said, must be added the enormous loss caused by the withdrawal of “millions of hardy, healthy men, in the bloom of life, from useful, productive labor.” Mr. Sumner found that from 1789 to 1843 our Government had spent $246,620,055 for all civil purposes, and in the same time, deducting the cost of the war of 1812 with Great Britain, had spent $1,335,000,000 in preparation for war, plus $400,000,000 for militia. Eighty cents of every dollar raised by Federal taxation in time of peace was a tribute to the fetich of war.

The Federal Government nowadays appropriates about $200,000,000 a year for direct warlike preparations, or in seven years more than it did in the first fifty-three years of its existence.

How about the world-cost of war?

The debts of nations given in The World Almanac exceed $30,000,000,000. These do not nearly represent the cost of a century's war, but only that portion of the cost which remains unpaid and a charge upon the people. Only in a few cases, like Canada and New Zealand, does public debt represent other than war expenditure, and these sums are more than balanced by “left-over” debts from the eighteenth century.

The earth has 1,487,000,000 inhabitants, or 207,580,000 families. Its permanent load of war debt is $1,000 for every family.